Well it doesnt help that studies post covid restrictions found many of said restrictions where ineffective. Masks tho we have good evidance they work at least.
As always, it’s better to recommend more strict restrictions when you don’t know if they’re effective and there’s an impact on public health. Hindsight is 20/20
I don’t know about other countries, but the on and off lockdowns in some countries proved to be ineffective. Many experts said it’s better to do lockdown in one go than it being staggered and having different levels of restrictions. But on the one hand, the totalitarian zero-COVID restriction like had happened in China is just as ineffictive.
If you’re going to lock the country down then you need to support small businesses too. Imagine spending long nights building a business only to see it disappear under COVID restrictions. And then you learn that the restrictions weren’t necessary.
Masks are more effective in protecting others if you are sick, rather than protecting yourself if others are sick. We should have the attitude that protecting others is good.
We should have the attitude that protecting others is good.
This flies in the face of North American “exceptional/radical individualism”.
Asian societies are largely collective. You do what you can to serve others, putting the needs of the community ahead of your own, and this leads to tighter-knit, stronger, and more resilient communities.
North American society is based on “muh rights” individualism, where the person is most important, and society needs to serve their needs, and not the other way around. This leads to weak, ephemeral, almost non-existent communities that are there only in name, or by a fluke of geography that makes completely random people cluster together without ever making serious or deep social connections.
Of the two, the former might end up being stifling to creatives and neuroatypicals, but the latter cannot survive any significant challenge without a significantly negative impact on the “community”.
I think they dumb down messaging too much. But then again, with what we know now, it’s not like the public is behaving responsibly. But thats not a messaging problem.
I recently had some guy rattle off 10 stupid reasons why we never landed on the moon in a row. I have never heard a more clear example of the fallacy of verbosity. One of them was "We didn’t have automatic windshield wipers for cars in the 60’s so there is no way we had the technology to go to the moon. "
I swear to god his reasons were that stupid and he had a ton of them.
as the meme states actually, the point of masks isn’t really to protect yourself, that’s a marginal side benefit, the point is to protect everyone else from your pestilence ridden breath of death.
watching videos that show how particulate from your breath spreads with and without just literally anything in front of your mouth is disgusting, unblocked your breath carries spittle several METERS in front of you, like the world’s most disgusting sprinkler put sideways.
I tried explaining this to a friend who was convinced masks do nothing. He would say stuff like “if it can still get through then what’s the point”. He claimed only people at risk should wear them.
People act like their mamas never told 'em to cover their damned mouths when they cough or sneeze. It’s the same damned thing, only masks work much better at keeping your filthy germs from infecting other people.
Common sense ain’t common, they say, and this anti-mask nonsense is just proof that it’s true.
But don’t you know? Having symptoms like “drier mouth,” “fogged glasses,” and “smelling your own breath” are much more dangerous than a virus that killed a million Americans at least.
What it really tells me it that the mouth breathers are crazier than we gave them credit for.
I tried explaining universal precautions to a pastor of a church I was attending, and pointed out that there is a Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor that overrides one’s personal desires. He could not dispute my points, but he also didn’t do anything to implement safety procedures.
Guess who left the church after the unsurprising COVID outbreak?
I realize a lot of people here aren’t believers, but my point is that even within the context of religion or common wisdom, masks make sense.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how decades of lead in gasoline, pipes, and in other places likely damaged generations of people’s ability to reason. I’m sincerely beginning to think this is a bigger problem than we’ll ever truly know.
Pretty much every study agrees, cloth masks are not as good as n95 or surgical masks. They don’t however say that cloth does nothing. Also I have not been able to find even 1 study that looked at multilayer cloth masks. Some even state that multilayer would probably do much better than single layer, but they weren’t even going to test them to see. Pretty much every study is focused on how well masks protect the wearer, but very few focus on how well they protect others from you. The only study that I found that does talk about it, says that while less than n95 masks, that even cloth masks have a significant affect on your spreading of the virus.
Thats great, but did they actually prevent spread is the question to ask. We can start out with the hypothesis that they do work, then we need to actually confirm if that is true.
That people can still type in these word salads in 2024 is beyond me. Real actual scientists all over the world have answered these questions years ago. Stop asking Facebook for answers. Try Google
No. Google helps you search the web. It’s up to you to look for trustworthy sources but that’s not too hard. Just sticking to Wikipedia is fine most of the time.
But that involves reading and this may prove challenging to some.
So wouldnt that apply to facebook also? And question are a good way of clarifying things, and pointing out flaws in people ideas. I also dont want to be smarter than anyone because that is not really controllable, I want to be wiser and more accurate in what I believe.
i mean… you could look into it? know that it’s difficult to set up an ideal study during a pandemic.
edit - also, it’s hard to take you seriously in this debate when you aren’t bothering to ACTUALLY LOOK AT SOME RESEARCH yourself. but i see you making lots of comments making a show of concern.
From all that I have seen and heard its at best split or the impact is so small that it is not noticeable. I think most of the ones that say it worked involved healthcare setting where trained people used good masks, not me at home depot with a mask from a box.
What I can say is that during the “mask years”, I seriously never got a cold, flu, or Covid. I usually get a cold at least once or twice a year. I think it’s still been a while since I’ve had one. My sister actually just got Covid about 2 weeks ago, I wore a mask around her for a few days and never caight it, tho I had a booster 6 months before, and she was about a year out. I took 3 home tests over 5 days and they were all negative.
Cool, I dont really know how this relates to the overall effectiveness of masks. I am going to guess that you were very cautious and took all kinds of precautions.
Most people didnt use N95 masks, they used random cloth ones and the surgical looking ones. The N95 masks are actually really good for dust, I use them all the time.
they used random cloth ones and the surgical looking ones. The
While not as good as a properly fitted N95, they are still more effective than no mask at reducing the spread of airborne particles from the wearer.
Remember that masks were always mostly about protecting others, not so much about protecting the wearer. And I think that’s where the loudest resistance came from - selfish people who don’t give a fuck about the wellbeing of other people.
Great, can you quantify how effective they were? So the issue is that if almost all infection happened not in public and cloth masks are marginally useful, what the point of wearing them in public if there is no measurable benefit?
The issue here is that people pretended masks were very affective, and I have not seen any actual data that they were very useful. I have seen a lot of memes like the one above that pretend they were essential when the only data I ever recall seeing was they were overall 4% useful, by a pro-mask source. And if you look around there are lots of sources that said they did nothing, I dont know which is true, but lack of solid evidence seems to point to it was pointless.
Do you think masks should have been mandated indoors if they had a 4% impact? How about 0.1%?
Twentyish studies are sourced at the bottom of the article I linked, and it details the effectiveness of each mask type in the body of the article. Why we are discussing mandates now I don’t know, feels like a bit of the ol’ goalposts on wheels to me, it’s not what I replied to.
I think this is the most important part of the article “Yes. When used with measures such as getting vaccinated, hand-washing and physical distancing, wearing a face mask slows how quickly the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads.” It essentially says do all the things and it will be impactful.
At what level of impact do you think masks should have been forced on people?
I’m not going to re-litigate mask mandates with you. I’m sure you’ll find someone happy to have that argument. You can keep moving those goalposts, but I’m not following.
The NASA budget has been slashed for decades on a row and is currently a tiny amount compared to what it was before. That they still manage to do what they do is half a miracle in on itself.
It’s so bad that a 3 percent of the military budget given to NASA would double it’s budget instantly.
With that in mind, I would put this on the military industrial complex
The funny thing is that NASA contracts the same companies as the military anyways (in the modern day, at least)
NASA Prime Contractors Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Jacobs, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman currently have over 3,800 suppliers contributing to Orion, the SLS rocket, and the lunar spaceport at Kennedy.
It gets slightly less funny when you realize that that’s the reason Nasa’s latest rocket made primarily from Space Shuttle parts is way more expensive than basically any commercial rocket. Essentially Congress only agrees to fund NASA if it means they also get to fund these military contractors.
Smokers?! Have you ever been to France? It’s like a trip back in time to 80s America, with a smoker on every street corner and an ash tray on every cafe patio table.
Except that it is a proven fact that public health care costs less per capita than private, so actually it sounds less expensive. The people lobbying to keep it private are the only ones who stand to lose and their brainwashed army of sycophants can’t understand anything beyond the points they’ve been trained to parrot.
I blame the obesity epidemic on the weak ass FDA and nutrition labeling. A ‘serving’ is whatever the hell they feel like making it - I’ve seen 1/3 of a cookie, a single tick tack (rounded down to 0g sugar), and every other arbitrary amount so actually comparing products takes so much time that most dont bother. Combine this with the fact that 90% of restaurants dont even bother giving you any information at all so you have to cook or go to specific big chains to actually track calories. Also it’s a safe assumption that everything at a restaurant is packed full of carbs, cheese, and oils for max calorie density.
My favorite reply to them is that it’s America and I can do whatever I want, I’ll call them snowflakes too whenever appropriate. They get pissed when you insinuate they’re anti American lul.
John Stewart’s latest show did a great job pointing this out. “Pro-constitution” redco- hats supporting a dictatorship and ignoring the fundamentals of the constitution.
i’ve just recently seen the same with pro 2a people. It was on a video about inclusive gun safety training, because the 2a is quite literally, for everyone. SO many people in the comments were saying something along the lines of “well if we trained them, then they might kill us”
Yeah no shit. What do you think they thought of you prior to this moment huh? Just utter fucking ignorance for anything more than a mere shred of intellectual thought being put into whatever they say. Not to mention that this is borderline authoritarian policy by nature but that’s the other funny part.
Didn’t gun control ramp up when the Black Panthers started exercising their rights to bear arms? Funny thing is the Panthers seem much more like a “well-regulated militia” than this Wild West, permitless carry, anything goes BS.
i mean, that’s also perfectly legal under 2A, 90% of the time gun control is related to regulation in regards to owning, rather than the ability to the own it period. Which is another argument all together tbh.
I wouldnt know much about the specifics of that group though, only that it has to do with civil rights from memory lol.
exactly. gun control only started when minorities started exercising their right to bear arms. The right don’t want gun control laws until the groups they are trying to oppress start exercising their second amendment rights.
Claims are not evaluated, in the loyalist worldview. They’re not arguments. They’re slogans. You shuffle your cards and say whatever might justify the ingroup being fundamentally superior to the outgroup. Because of course, it is impossible for someone to simply be wrong. That would require evaluating claims. No: truth is dictated by people above you. They must be right and smart and handsome, or they wouldn’t be above you. Any challenge, any criticism, any disagreement, is a personal attack. You are calling someone lesser.
And I say “you” because these people think this is all we’re doing. They think that’s all there is. It’s reality as a team sport.
Someone once told me that the box in which masks came in says “doesn’t protect from viruses”, as if it was hidden-in-plain-sight proof that masks don’t work.
Yeah, they don’t protect the user from viruses, they protect other people. The box is technically correct, Patricia, there is no conspiracy here.
It is humorous that these people think that they have some secret knowledge that only they know and they feel so much power because of it. Except that the information they know is incorrect and they just end up looking like an idiot.
I mean, I would not say that it is reality, just that they act like it is - except even that much is not true, b/c when they get REALLY sick, they finally show up at a hospital begging to be saved. So even they know, deep down, where the medicine is at. Cognitive dissonance is a horrific, terrible thing:-(.
They will, but you have to follow some protocols, like not having beard where the masks is supposed to seal around your face, not using it more than ~3 times (iirc), not trying to clean it (just let it rest for some days on a clean surface) and etc.
Basically always seal testing.
Also, iirc the N stands for not oil resistant, so any oil staining ruins it. I’d guess that includes sneezing on it.
I think they actually do understand but don’t have enough empathy with other people to see it as their responsibility to protect other people from their viruses.
Not that someone as perfect as them would ever sick enough to potentially infect others…
This. So much of this. I can’t even convince family members to not go and socialize with dozens of others while they are sick! Five years ago, I would have bet my life’s savings and every appendage I have that I would get the correct answer if I asked someone whether illnesses spread through contact with or being near a sick person.
it was in the 40’s f (4-10 c) and it was still winter. Spring in MN, that’s T-shirt weather. but boomer’s just can’t not treat middle-aged men like children.
What is the thesis of this meme, that people are just stupid and there is no underlying problem or system that can be improved?
Science is often communicated to the public via either companies, politics, or the media. Which al have their own interests and issues in representing “scientific facts”. To give some examples of the “science” people have been exposed to: These new pain killers are perfectly save and absolutely not addictive. Making health care accessible is actually bad for the economy and will be more expensive in the end. Or the numerous articles on outlier papers published in the media that conclude that it’s actually healthy to [insert obviously unhealthy habit here (sponsored by some industry group)].
Science has a communication problem, and the communication conduits have a huge credibility problem. The results of which made an already bad pandemic even worse.
Holy shit, a reasonable comment that doesn’t just assume the other half of the country are idiots.
People don’t know what to believe and are skeptical for good reason (some historical, some present). Time and time again we’ve seen our institutions fails us. We see blatant corruption that the elites don’t even bother to hide (e.g. corporate capture). And we see freedoms eroded in times of crisis (e.g. Patriot Act). I’m not saying we should be conspiratorial about doctors or science. But reasonable people on both sides of the aisle see what’s happening to our institutions and this has knock on effects.
The thesis is that you should listen to experts when you don’t know what you’re talking about. No one is saying experts are never wrong, but they’re more likely to be right than just some guy. There’s a whole lot of ‘just some guys’ who claim to appreciate science until it tells them something they don’t want to hear. That’s what the meme is against.
Okay, what about when there is a lack of consensus? When you have scientists who, for example, argue that the virus came from the Wuhan lab whereas the narrative being told is that that’s crazy. This is the problem I have with people in this thread assuming that everyone who isn’t immediately on board is dumb, delusional, conspiratorial, etc. We’re not talking about flat Earth theory here; it’s not that simple.
The problem is only when expertise is unduly dismissed. If there’s no consensus you listen to the differing ideas and you can determine what sounds right to you while acknowledging your lower level of confidence by being extra cautious until there’s more information available.
Sure, people yelling on the internet is annoying and bad, but that’s regardless of the argument they’re pushing. It doesn’t say anything about the quality of the evidence if one side is more annoying.
Science is often communicated to the public via either companies, politics, or the media. Which al have their own interests and issues in representing “scientific facts”.
Science is communicated using whatever means has an audience.
Science is also communicated much more precisely and accurately in scientific journals, but those generally aren’t easily accessible to the wider public.
Do you have a suggestion to how we might solve those 2 overlapping problems?
Fauci is to blame. The path of evil is paved in good intention.
The fucker told everyone that they didn’t need masks.
What he was intending to do was make sure doctors and emergency personnel had masks. instead, it became an inflection point or publicly dividing the nation.
Let’s be real, the misinfosphere would’ve have found something else to misguide the morons. He didn’t even say “you don’t need masks”, he said “don’t buy all the masks, stay inside”
I think the much deeper reason is, that stupid people can’t fathom that knowledge can change. They can’t understand that scientists legitimately didn’t know better, despite their best efforts. They can’t accept, that scientists come to other conclusions based on new data, instead they assume some ulterior motive.
Seems a totally reasonable response when we had folks hoarding and scalping toilet paper. Stay home was always better advice than go out masked, esp at the beginning.
And folks who could not were folks who needed masks - not sure why this is so hard.
Also - that’s your goto? Shaming folks for doing what was recommended when they could? How did we even get here from pretending Fauci was doing anything other than dispensing what was believed to be the best advice available at the time.
What a ridiculous response. Please just move along. I know I am.
Comprehension of the underlying reasons for a particular set of events or advice isn’t really a conspiracy nut’s bread and butter. That’s why they’re idiots and professionals aren’t to blame. Keeping the healer alive is a pretty basic strategy and Fauci was right to do it.
His one job is to not give public health measures a bad image, and he did the exact opposite by gaslighting. It’s amazing how people are defending being gaslighted. Pathetic.
He started with gaslighting. Then he EVENTUALLY corrected himself in poorly phrased ways that were far too easy to clipchimp his message ib to oblivion.
I do not care how much anyone respects him or doctors. I don’t care what word you think would apply. His job was a communicator, and he failed miserably.
In a March 8, 2020, interview, Fauci stated that “right now in the United States, people [who are not infected] should not be walking around with masks”, but “if you want to do it, that’s fine”. In the same interview, Fauci said that buying masks “could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need” them: “When you think masks, you should think of healthcare providers needing them”
Yikes. Apparently he did gaslight people in the time between stating his position and then explaining it.
What really happened was bad actors circulated edited clips of this video, out of context, around Facebook and other social media sites. Lots of folks, apparently you included, ate it up and have been happy customers at the propaganda buffet ever since.
Do you seriously fail to underatand how communicating in a way that’s not easy to misconstrue, and especially not clipchimp these days, is THE ENTITE POINT of his fucking job, then I am stumped.
You literally do not understand professional communication if you’re just going to excuse failing to be a pro. Yes, it’s NOT easy. That’s why it’s a damn well paid job. Stop making excuses for people paid far more than their performance.
You realize he fed in to that information distortion, right?
Holy fuck you’re too dumb. You see information distortion, you refuse to disagree that he failed to do a good job. You just fail to realize how terrible of a job he did. Pitiful. You blind yourself.
You realize he fed in to that information distortion, right? <—you are here
Which is why the clip is perfect for you. You’re pissed at dude that did his job because you believed misinformation. Misinformation your feeding to others right here on lemmy. But it gets better.
Notice how Hank specifically mentions isn’t the fault of NOAA because much like Fauci, the information they gave was correct.
I’m summary: Peoole that make up and spread bs = problem. People that make factuality correct statements = not the problem.
Not really seeing why this is difficult. If I cut up and paste your replies to say whatever I want them to say using your own words, any reasonable person would look and say, yep Bananigans is the problem here. But for some unknowable reason you’d apparently blame yourself.
You see information distortion, you refuse to disagree that he failed to do a good job.
Because your only example of him doing a bad job is regurgitated misinformation, which is the whole point of all of my replies. I think you’ll be more convincing if you try me again with less alternative facts.
Except the public official didn’t gaslight anyone who actually paid attention to what he said. Fauci made the right call asking people to prioritize social distancing over masks in the initial phases of the pandemic so that medical personnel would have enough.
He didn’t say “you don’t need masks”
He didn’t say “masks don’t work”
He didn’t say “don’t wear masks at all”
Furthermore, the WHO also advised against wearing masks initially, for the same reasons. They were actually more against the efficacy of masks, but backtracked that opinion after more data came out.
Like what is this take? Really? The only people who have a hate boner for Fauci coincidentally don’t know a fucking thing he said, and are going to believe what makes their fee fees hurt less anyway.
He was handed a deadly pandemic while dealing with the most corrupt and incompetent leadership our country has ever seen. He did alright. If only Obama was still in office at the time.
Right, because dishonest actors exist, his job as a public health policy communicator was directly subverted by himself for making such an increadibly unwise blunder of giving them ammunition.
His job is to not give public health measures a bad image, and he failed completely.
Just because professionals made a mistake does NOT magically absolve them of the blundering mistake.
I mean, I’ll reiterate this- he made the right call. At the very first stage of the pandemic, shortage of medical supplies was a big deal. Gloves, respirators, masks, everything.
Medical providers need to have those things to do their jobs. Otherwise, they get sick. And when the doctors are sick, you start to have real problems.
Faci’s only downfall was existing in a world filled to the brim with dipshits, in a country being led by a dipshit that encouraged the worst of the dipshits.
He told people, “the doctors need the masks”, which was 100% true- then the fucking president refused to wear one. Blaming Fauci for the army of dipshits following trump is disingenuous, he was the only person in that administration that ever spoke any kind of factual information.
You can declare he made the right call all you want, but it well never evaporate the fact that it caused many, many idiots to not wear masks throughout the entire time people were paying attention to covid.
The ENTIRE DIFFICULT PART of communication is not being easily misconstrued. He hedged his words so poorly and clipchimped himself to hell. That is utterly irresponsible out of a professional communicator. That’s his job, and he failed.
It’s such a bad idea to prioritize medical personnel having masks. There’s no way they would become high-risk vectors with the multitude of sick people they handle daily. /s
Exactly. The surgeon general tweeted out, “STOP WEARING MASKS” and CNN was publishing articles with all the anti-masker claims, including that they don’t work and could increase your risk of getting it instead, and people just pretend like it never happened and the anti-maskers came out of thin air.
It wasn’t just an idiotic ploy to deliberately spread misinfo to trick people into leaving masks for doctors, it was also about the government trying to cover their own ass for having sold off their emergency stockpiles for fast cash.
This is also misinformation. Fauci, et al, were going based on the current NIH guidance at the time, taken from the original SARS virus, which was that improper mask use was potentially more dangerous due to the risk of cross contamination. In this case there was actually strong evidence that a significant number of cases in healthcare settings were coming from contaminated PPE.
At the time, it was thought that it was primarily surface contact which spread the virus, or at least that this was a major source of spread. Now imagine that your average idiot with one improperly fitted mask was told to use masks. They would touch contamination surfaces, touch their mask, and then bring that mask into their car and their house, contaminating those surfaces as well. Given what we knew at the time, this was considered a very serious risk.
Once we understood that airborne spread was a bigger threat, they updated the science. If they are guilty of anything, it was failing to properly explain the nuance of the above reasoning, though in their defense, there was a giant orange idiot taking up most of the oxygen in the room.
You’re assuming these people believe we even send things to space. I had a serious ass conversation recently with my father’s roommate. Typical conspiracy theorist ding dong. Full on flat earther and everything. I asked him how he thinks GPS works if the earth was flat. He admitted he didn’t know but then when I started to explain how it works by pinging satellites we put up in space he cut me off and said space isn’t real. Like legitimately thinks space isn’t real. He on a separate occasion also complained that we didn’t need to wear masks during covid because we apparently make our own viruses in our bodies and viruses don’t spread between people.
These people don’t even understand how logic works. Let alone that people could be smarter than they are.
Many of them are religious and believe plenty of things they didn’t directly observe. It’s more that they have been trained through religious thinking that if someone confidently claims something it must be more true than someone who honestly admits that “it is the best we can know right now and we will update our understanding as we obtain more evidence.” These people need the answer now and that answer can’t change because changing your opinion based on new evidence is seen as weakness and opinions should be handed down from on high and never change.
There’s always been crazy and stupid people. And then we gave them the internet to connect and to have a voice. Now they feed of each other’s crazynies and believe they run the world.
Only way to fight this is education. Give people the ability to see through crazy. You’re not born with common sense. It’s taught and learned.
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